Country without a port

Chile annexed Bolivia’s Pacific coast back in the 19th century, a deprivation that still affects its prosperity. The International Court of Justice is considering its verdict on restoring Bolivia’s sovereign access to the sea

Dawn in El Alto, a suburb of La Paz. It was cold at 4,000 metres above sea level, and Juan Capiona and “Sandro” (who requested anonymity) were warming up the engines of their articulated lorries for the drive to the Chilean coast, to pick up 45 tonnes of freight apiece. It’s a difficult journey, over the Altiplano (the Bolivian plateau), the Andes and the Atacama desert. “It would be much easier if there weren’t any borders,” said Capiona; they expected long queues and even longer customs formalities.

In a recent Financial Times piece, Edward Luce cited “the Bolivian navy” as an example of oxymoron. This would surprise Capiona and other Bolivians, who know that their country has not always been cut off from the Pacific. At independence in 1825 it had 400km of coastline, but this was annexed by Chile during the War of the Pacific (see “The saltpetre war”), making Bolivia the only completely landlocked country in South America. (Paraguay has access to the Atlantic via the Paraná river.) According to the Book of the Sea, published by the government in 2014. this impedes economic development by making Bolivia’s exports more expensive and depriving it of the lost territory’s resources. US economist Jeffrey Sachs has found that being landlocked subtracts 0.7 percentage points from a country’s natural economic growth. The poorest country on every continent is landlocked: Moldova, Niger, Afghanistan, Nepal — and Bolivia. But only Bolivia lost its coastline after a war, so Bolivians see this not as a geographical accident but as an injustice.

The two lorries headed south. They were not new, and one still had the name of a Finnish haulage company on its doors. Capiona, 27, has been driving HGVs for six years, and regularly makes the journey to Chile to collect freight that he sometimes takes as far as the Brazilian border. He thought the ocean was beautiful, and was sorry he never had time to swim or lie on the beach. His dream, shared with all Bolivians I met, (...)

(3) “Nature, nurture and growth”, The Economist, London, 12 June 2015. Bolivians are familiar with Jeffrey Sachs who, with French economist Daniel Cohen, advised them on neoliberal economic shock therapy in 1985, intended to curb hyperinflation. It resulted in the redundancy of 23,000 miners, greater inequality and the spread of coca growing.

(12) The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982) gives states an exclusive economic zone stretching 200 nautical miles (370km) from their coast, in which they have sovereign rights to the exploration and use of marine resources (hydrocarbon deposits, fish stocks).